Sort-of-Greek Barley Salad

It's been a long time since I've posted here - and I have my reasons, trust me, but that's neither here nor there. Right now, it's all about quick, easy, summer food, the kind you make when you and your spouse are both ravenous and you're broke and your AC is broke and it's 90 degrees out and running the oven is patent suicide. It's made even better by a side of cooling Ecuadorian-style marinated onions, an easy recipe I learned to make from my amazing past employers, who taught me all kinds of lovely cooking things which will probably end up on this blog.

Creamy Chickpea Pasta

Ready for another easy, pasta-based recipe? Really, these are changing my life. This one is creamy and rich and, due to the rosemary, reminds me of my mother, with her rosemary-filled garden beds and epic rosemary-roasted potatoes, and my grammy, who gave me my first gigantic bottle of dried rosemary when I got married and moved out of state.

Funfetti Salad

You're probably thinking one of two things - "what is funfetti doing on a salad", or "oh, this poor vegan, she's been eating vegetables alone so long she thinks they're fun. And confetti-like."

  My advice to you, in either case, would be to just stop and eat this delicious salad - complete with creamy hummus dressing! - and look at a ton of pictures I took of said salad, because it's amazing and I want to remember it forever and ever. Ready?

So far, I have made this salad as a meal and as a side with two different dressings. A great addition to the toppings I already have pictured are celery and radish, by the way, but I was out so that was a no-go.

Tuscan Beans with Sage

                                   

I've been very much into convenience food lately. And by that I mean, make-ahead, can-be-carted-around-in-a-backpack-and-eaten-cold-hours-later food.

Travelling Lentil + Sprout + Lemon Salad

   My love affair with lentils having reached something of a fever pitch, it seems high time I shared another lentil-based recipe.

   This salad has been saving my butt all week. I made the lentil base, courtesy of that spectacular mensch, Mark Bittman, and have been playing with that as a base for other creations. My experimentation came to an abrupt end, however, after making this variation, which I think is generally an indicator of a winner.

Beet + Walnut Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

I’ve been making various incarnations of this salad for almost two years now.

The salad I usually keep very simple: this is actually the most toppings I’ve ever added—the beets and walnuts stand alone, flavor-wise, so if you don’t have any other vegetables on hand, don’t worry.

The dressing I’ve also altered: sometimes I do a simple olive oil and vinegar vinaigrette, often I use Dijon mustard instead of regular, but this time it was the old yellow because I am out of Dijon.

However you spin it, its almost impossible to go wrong as long as you have the foundation of this salad: greens + canned beets + walnuts + dressing.

Beet + Walnut Salad

Serves one as a meal, or two as a side salad

2 cups chopped greens

½ can (or so) beets      

1/8 cup walnuts  

    

Other suggested toppings:

¼ green pepper

½ onion, sautéed in olive oil

2 small radishes, sliced

To assemble:

Prepare toppings, and arrange on lettuce as desired. If you are making ahead of time, do not add nuts until ready to serve, as they will get soggy, and don’t add the sautéed onions until they’re cooled or the lettuce will wilt.

Dress and serve.

Honey Mustard Dressing

2 tbsp mustard of choice

1 tbsp honey

2 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

1 tsp olive oil (optional)

Salt, pepper, and onion powder to taste

Whisk ingredients together. Adjust seasonings as needed.

End-of-Summer Greek Pasta Salad

 It’s happening: the end of summer is approaching. We had a week of chilly mornings and evening here at the beach—basically just enough to get everyone unpacking their sweaters and reawaken unwelcome memories of pumpkin spice madness and Uggs—followed quickly by two weeks of muggy days with temps reaching into the upper 90s. I’m not complaining though, these last throes of summer have found me kayaking on river and sea, getting my money’s worth out of my swimsuit, and stuffing my face with this delicious salad.

Breakfast Enchiladas [vegan]

My handsome sidekick and I recently had several weeks off of work and school. You'd think I would have used this time to do a lot of cooking and blogging, but that wasn't so much the case: we stayed pretty busy with getting settled into our new apartment and procrastinating.

But we did cook some things. It was actually Jack who conceived of these delicious enchiladas. They were inspired by my vegan breakfast scramble, another Hard Times-prompted creation that Jack will actually deign to eat, even in all its healthy/vegan glory. With our recent (accidental) discovery of green enchilada sauce was just begging to be adapted for breakfast, scramble-filled enchiladas were the obvious step.

Summer Rolls + Curry Peanut Dipping Sauce [vegan]

At the risk of being too twee, I present to you the perfect recipe to celebrate this beautifully progressing summer: summer rolls. I’ve been obsessed with these since my grandparents began making them, following instructions provided by some Laotian friends who we knew back from the days when we all lived in New York State. And, in a charming turn of events, they are really a great hot weather food—filling, but not heavy, a breeze to make, and, bonus, there is no heat involved in cooking them. They can even be made ahead of time and kept covered in the fridge.

Happy Cinco de Mayo + Hard Times-style Haystacks [vegan]

 

    One of my favorite restaurants is a subversive-looking little joint in Minneapolis called Hard Times Cafe. Collectively owned, the place is open nearly all night and offers an unapologetically vegan and vegetarian menu, as well as some really delicious coffee. Hard Times has a personality that’s simultaneously welcoming and a little scary. The interior is casual and grungy— you feel perfectly at ease dumping your stuff in a booth and lounging around like it’s your own living room, just redone with more feral houseplants and anarchist graffiti. When one hears of a vegetarian restaurant, you typically expect little portions of artisan salads followed by raw deserts and herbal tea eaten at sleek tables by couples in Tevas who smell of patchouli, not nihilism and a casual refusal to fit into any recognizable mold, culinary or otherwise.

   You’ll see college students there, and people who look homeless, and others who look like they’ve done a lot of acid and are going to do a lot more in the future, and even the occasional trifecta of these things. My point is, Hard Times draws a mixed crowd, and vegetarianism isn’t exactly their selling point as a business. Awesome is their selling point. Awesome, and fantastic food, and not really caring about what you or Minneapolis or anyone else thinks. Being Hard Times.